THE WHOLE IDEA of the Pope and the Vatican empire has nothing whatsoever to do with biblical or historic orthodox Christianity. The papacy has always based itself tendentiously on Jesus’ words to Peter when He said, “I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). Roman Catholics believe that Jesus was there designating Peter as the chief Apostle and therefore the first Pope of Rome and that all subsequent popes are part of that “apostolic succession” coming down from Peter. But this is absolute nonsense — authoritarian nonsense to bolster human autocracy over Divine prerogative and create an earthly state which purports to be “Christian”. There can be no “apostolic succession” because only the Apostles of Jesus’ time can have the designation of Apostle. Let me go into this a little…

Apart from the Pope, many other professing ‘Christians’ claim to be Apostles today and thereby also lay claim to far more power than they actually have or, indeed, can have. The word apostle comes from the Greek apostolos, which means, literally, ‘one who is sent’. Our word “posted” is derived from it. So, very loosely speaking, the word apostle can apply to anyone given a special commission or posting in the Church in any era of its existence. Occasionally in the New Testament the word is used in this broader sense to refer to those who have been specially commissioned for missionary work by the churches (e.g., 2 Corinthians 8:23; Philippians 2:25.). But such general, church-commissioned, sent-ones were not the same as those entrusted with the unique spiritual gift of Apostleship, who were “Apostles of Jesus Christ” (See Galatians 1:1.), sent personally by Him, and who had unique qualifications for receiving that gift and distributing spiritual gifts to others. The sole qualifications which the Bible gives for being an Apostle are as follows:

1) He must have accompanied Jesus during His earthly ministry, which was from His baptism until His Ascension (Acts 1:21-23.).

2) He must have been a personal witness of the resurrected Lord Jesus (1 Corinthians 15:7; 1 Corinthians 9:1; Acts 1:22; 4:33; 10:39-42.).

3) He must have received a personal call from Christ to Apostleship and a commission to fulfil its duties (Luke 6:13; Mark 3:14-15).

4) He must have had, as his field of labour, the whole world, rather than a local church or group of churches (Matthew 28:19; Mark 16:15).

In carrying out this personal commission from the Lord Jesus Christ, these Apostles (along with the New Testament Prophets) were in the process of laying the foundations of the Church — a historico-spiritual architectural procedure which is a once-for-all exercise and which cannot (and need not) be repeated throughout every era of Church history (Please read Ephesians 2:20 along with Revelation 21:14). This is precisely the context in which the Lord Jesus told the Apostle Peter that his testimony to the Messiahship of Christ constituted the rock upon which He would build His Church (Matthew 16:18), as I will further develop below.

Can anyone alive today, including the Pope, make the bold claim that they are an Apostle of Jesus Christ in the way the Peter, Paul and the others were? A consideration of the above facts must surely necessitate a negative answer, for the following reasons:

1) None of us alive today has spent any time with the Lord Jesus during His earthly ministry.

2) None of us has ever been material witnesses of His Resurrection. In fact, our evidence for the Resurrection rests solely on the foundation which was laid by the true Apostles, who were commissioned to write these things down for us in the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:1-9).

3) None of us today has been personally commissioned by Christ to be witnesses to the fact of His Resurrection in the way in which the original Apostles were.

4) None of us can possibly be called the original founders of the Church.

5) Neither have we ever been personally commissioned by Christ to perform those signs which were exclusively those of an Apostle of His (Matthew 10:1-4; Mark 3:13-15; 16:17-18; 2 Corinthians 12:12).

For these compelling reasons, there can be no genuine Apostles of Jesus Christ today. Not one. The spiritual gift of Apostleship lasted only for the infancy of the Church, during its foundation-laying period, for the duration of the lives of the original Apostles, and has no functional relevance today. Anyone claiming to be an Apostle now (including the Pope) is a false apostle and impostor — of which there were many even in the early church (Acts 15; Galatians 1:7-9; 2 Corinthians 10 & 11; Colossians 2), whose end shall be according to their works (2 Corinthians 11:13-15; cf. Revelation 2:2).

Coming back to the Papacy’s claims about Peter and apostolic succession, when Jesus said, “On this rock I will build My church”, the rock cannot have been the actual man and Apostle, Peter. Certainly, he was a part of the Church’s foundation-laying, but one has to look back a few verses from there and see the train of thought in context behind this section of Scripture. First, in verse 13, we see that Jesus asks the disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” They then reply, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets” (v.14). Then He says, “But what about you?…Who do you say I am?” (v.15). Then Peter, plainly speaking on behalf of all the disciples, said, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” (v.16). That confession by Peter of Jesus as being the Messiah, the son of the living God, is really what identifies the “rock” on which the Church would be built. The Apostles and Prophets formed the foundation of the Church but Christ was the Cornerstone of it — the chief element of the foundations. Jesus is known in Scripture as the cornerstone of the Church’s foundations, a living stone, a stumbling stone and rock of offence, the foundation of the Church. So many New Testament Scriptures confirm that: Matthew 21:42-43; 1 Corinthians 3:10,11; Ephesians 2:19-22; 1 Peter 2:4-8; 1 Corinthians 3:11; Acts 4:11-12; Romans 9:33.

Therefore, the papacy as the inherited successor to the original Apostles of Jesus Christ is a completely invented fiction. Every Pope who has claimed to be ‘vicar of Christ’ has been an impostor, including the latest incumbent. It is all about control. The whole religious schtick is a kind of mass gaslighting of the ignorant; and of course so many have daddy-issues and mummy-issues that the whole presentation of Papa (the meaning behind the word “Pope”) and Mary as Holy Mother has folks eating out of the hands of the Vatican establishment. For Christ did not come to start a religion with Popes in a Vatican state, Archbishops in palaces, cardinals everywhere, with all the highly expensive and extravagant buildings, the stocks and shares, the gold, hugely expensive dress regalia, etc. He came to evict Satan from his usurped rulership of the world (John 12:31) and gather His people so that they would become the Ekklesia and the population of the new creation to come. All the pomp and poncing about in fancy clothes (which cost a fortune) is a terrible distraction from the true faith and are merely symbols of earthly power. All the adulating of the Pope, the rosary, transubstantiation, veneration of Mary as being without original sin and someone to pray to for intercession, and many other superstitions, are manifestations of false religion. The Roman Catholic establishment, with its connections with the mafia and long former involvement with the freemasonic P2 lodge, is utterly corrupt and will no doubt continue to play a big part in creating an interfaith alliance which will alienate all genuine disciples of Christ and paint them as being “extremists”.

I watch all this and more with a sigh in my soul and the ardent desire for this theatre of the absurd, which has stolen Christ’s thunder in usurpation, to come to its climax and be dissolved (resolved), as it will be.

[FOOTNOTE: In chapter 5 of the book by Fyodor Dostoevsky, “The Brothers Karamazov”, one of the characters proposes a story in which Christ suddenly comes back to earth in Seville, Spain at the height of the Roman Catholic Church’s Inquisition in the 15th century and, after being mobbed at the cathedral, is immediately incarcerated in prison by church officials. The dialogue between the Grand Inquisitor and this suddenly-appearing Christ is a masterpiece of literature, clearly showing that church’s hypocrisy and manipulations. You can read more about this in a post I put on my website: https://diakrisis-project.com/2022/03/04/the-grand-inquisitor-and-christ/ , where I show a video of Sir John Gielgud as the Inquisitor in a brilliant film extract].

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© Copyright, Alan Morrison, 2025
[The copyright on my works is merely to protect them from any wanton plagiarism which could result in undesirable changes (as has actually happened!). Readers are free to reproduce my work, so long as it is in the same format and with the exact same content and its origin is acknowledged]

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